More about Silhouettes

Several issues ago, we discussed how silhouettes can be a great design idea. Let us explore some examples of why a silhouette can work better than typical pictures or even vector art.

First of all, silhouettes are mainly neutral -- you cannot identify the race or nationality of a person based on their silhouettes. This makes silhouettes a very useable form of visuals for audiences that have a large international or racial representation. Silhouettes also do not call for attention, and can work as subtle graphics that complement and sync with the speaker or presenter rather than drawing attention. Imagine you use a picture of a very beautiful or an ugly person on your slide -- it is natural for the audience to look at that visual for a longer time at the expense of giving you attention!

Next week, we will look more closely at silhouettes -- and we also have some free silhouettes for you to download and use (scroll down to find the businessman silhouettes). Do you want to share your feedback about using silhouettes as visuals in your PowerPoint slides? Go to our LinkedIn group, and share your thoughts!

Do let us know how we are doing -- we love to hear from you! Also please do help us improve Indezine by filling in our two-minute survey -- thank you so much! And if you enjoyed reading any content on Indezine.com, please do like them on Facebook and other social platforms, click the Google +1 buttons on all these pages, and tweet them all so that you can share these joys with others -- and keep your feedback coming! Have a fabulous week.

Conversations, Interviews and Guest Posts

Smile and Relax: by Claudyne Wilder

What type of talks do you give? Are they about diseases? Are they about laying people off? Are they about problems in people's lives? If so, then you should not smile during your presentation. Smiling when discussing serious or life-threatening situations is obviously inappropriate. But most of us do not give those types of talks -- yet many people never, ever, crack a smile. But it's important! You say to me, "Right, Claudyne, I'll just break into a grin when I get to the third point I'm discussing." Not exactly. As you look at your talk you will see topics and points that lend themselves to a flicker of a smile and sometimes an actual grin, to show how excited, happy, or pleased you are to share this point. Read more about smiling in this post by Claudyne Wilder.

NXPowerLite for PowerPoint (Mac): Conversation with Michael Barber

Michael Barber is Marketing Manager for Neuxpower Solutions Ltd. in London. He is originally from the Newcastle upon Tyne, in the NE of England. Before joining Neuxpower, Michael worked for the UK’s largest software company, Sage UK. He spent 8 happy years at Sage, working in a variety of roles across its many marketing departments. His career highlight (other than joining Neuxpower) was bringing to market Sage's flagship software-as-a-service, Sage One. Outside of work, Michael spends most of his time going to music gigs/festivals and following his football team, Newcastle United as they take the EPL by storm. In this conversation, Michael discusses the new NXPowerLite file optimization product for PowerPoint users on the Mac. Read the conversation here.

Businessman Silhouettes for PowerPoint - 01

These businessman silhouettes are ready to use within your PowerPoint presentation slides – and have been provided in both black and white colors. Both variations are contained within two separate slides in one presentation that you can download. In addition, you can use PowerPoint’s fills, lines, and effects to make these silhouettes appear coordinated with your slides.

Copy the silhouettes graphics (clip arts) of your choice from the downloaded presentation, and paste them into your PowerPoint presentation slides. All these silhouette graphics can be used and customized with Shape Styles just like any other PowerPoint shape. You can also paste them into a Word document, an Excel worksheet, or any other program. Download these silhouette slides.

Learn PowerPoint 2010: Animations

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Pictures in PowerPoint

Webinar Tomorrow!

Wednesday, May 2 2012

10 AM EST (3 PM GMT)

Plenty has been written about how the iPad will transform face-to-face selling, but for most results have been disappointing. Instant-on, touch, and the lack of physical barrier between buyer and seller suggest new possibilities. Yet putting catalogues, brochures, and static slides onto iPads has simply replicated the existing sales interaction.

In How to use the iPad for Powerful Sales Conversations, Richard Goring from BrightCarbon introduces the idea that prospects want a conversation, not to sit still and listen for 30 minutes. The iPad is the perfect tool to make that conversation visual, and therefore more compelling and more persuasive.